So I pretty much ended the year how I started. Virtually no change in the net worth. And in these times, that's perfectly fine with me!

I kept my gift spending in check (and didn't buy anything for myself either) so not faring so bad in the debt department. I did contribute a big chunk of money to the Roth IRA (since I haven't been putting anything toward my dormant 401k). In fact, the 401k is being moved to a new investor so I'm not sure if I'll be getting those nice dividends or not. It's a wait-and-see.

I don't think I can reliably use Zillow anymore. They dropped my home value 25% in 3 months. No house does that, even in this shoddy market. It's probably because there hasn't been a home like mine that has sold around here for a while, so they're using other comparables within a wide vicinity, which makes things REALLY inaccurate. When I get my next home assessment, I'll definitely put that value here and then just leave it. In the meantime, I'll slowly bleed the home value as necessary so the line graph isn't so crazy.

Gonna be taking extra music jobs any place I can, and get funds back up to prime levels. Bring it 2012!

Nothing exciting right now, except playing piano for a Christmas show that will add very little to the savings. I plan on transferring a lump sum over to the Roth near the end of the year. I'm being very conservative this Christmas as it's my first in the new home and budgets rule spending habits this season.

Goals for 2012 are to get my Checking, Savings, and Business accounts back to pre-homebuying levels. The bill-paying checking account should peak at $6,000 every 1st of the month (currently it gets to less than $4,000). Savings should be around $10,000 (currently less than $7,000), and Business should be up around $20,000 (currently less than $6,000, although it will climb north of $10,000 once a family loan is paid back next month).

So a lot of freelance and extra side jobs are needed to get the totals back up to comfortable levels. My home budget will be very small next year as I only need one small piece of furniture, a rug, a few more paintings, and a patio set, so that should no longer interfere like it did in 2011. A new laptop will be coming to replace the 8-year-old dinosaur that's on its last leg, but not until April-ish. I only need one freelance job to pay for that.

I paid for all my roadtrip expenses this month, as well as the new iPhone 4S (my first new phone in over 4 years!), so that brought liquid cash down a bit. My only saving grace was the sharp rise in stocks which boosted retirement funds almost $4K. I also had a few extra jobs, music and freelance, that helped boost me up.

Zillow's gone wonky with house prices again. I just don't think that site is reliable enough. Once I get my next assessment for property taxes, I'll just see what they value my house at and then keep the amount steady for a year. I'm not gonna keep wildly fluctuating every month and have my net worth graph look like some arrhythmic heart beat.

Due to first year adjustments, the impound on my escrow has gone up, so pretty much the raise I received in July has been completely nullified. Perfect. Gonna have to keep finding those side jobs to keep 'er steady.

Ugh, this isn't the right direction. Bleeding house prices and retirement funds are making the net worth look pretty shoddy.

I took a 16-day roadtrip up and down the western US coast (including Victoria, BC, Canada). I had $2,000 earmarked a long time ago for this trip, and luckily my share only ended up costing around $1,650, although a majority of that cost is not yet reflected in this month's totals. The remaining monies will stay where it is, a good start to slowly building that vacation fund back up.

Looks like a new phone is in my immediate future, the current one is hardly working anymore, but I'll be patient...

I've paid off the last of my huge credit card debt, which made a sizable dent in the cash stash, but them's the breaks. I've still got 16 months to go on the furniture payment plan, but at $180/month that's not too much to sweat.

I believe my Zillow home value has finally settled down, and with the 2 improvements installed, the home asset was raised just a hair, enough to offset the drop in cash and retirement for this month.

September will be a bit more of hurt, since I'm taking a 2-week roadtrip this month. I didn't take any vacation last year, so a break is long overdue. As stated before, I've already earmarked away some money for this trip, but I'm still going to try and not spend all of it.

If rumors are to be believed, I may finally ditch this dying 4-year-old Palm Treo and get the iPhone 5 for Sprint, which should leapfrog everyone else, at least for a while, hehe. I'll know for sure in a month's time.

The last of my major credit card debt should be vanquished by paying off the remaining home improvement items this month. I'm pretty sure that era is over, as I've already committed to no longer spending over $750 on any one house item as long as I live here. Retirement has dropped a bit thanks to Congress making the stock markets freak out. The Zillow algorithm continues to fluctuate wildly, so I'll leave the home value as is for now.

One better piece of good news is that I've acquired my first raise since I've been at the new employment. A 5% increase (retroactive to July 1) provides a little more breathing room. I've also been subbing on the piano between 4 different churches just about every weekend (someone always needs to take a vacation). This has also helped to build up assets and soften the blow of the credit card payments. If I can keep at this pace for the remainder of the year, I just may be on track to break the $70,000/year mark. Oh wouldn't that be marvelous?

Despite the salary increase, I'm not going to change budget figures for the remainder of the year, although I do plan on getting a new phone with unlimited data (thereby increasing my phone bill an extra $10/month) by this Fall. I've had the current phone for over 4 years and I'm badly behind in this awesome technology we have all around us.

Also trying to get my housewarming parties out of the way for the summer (I need several to cover all my friends) but they can cost $100-200 each, and I can only have so many before my instinctual finance-laden conscience kicks me in the backside telling me to knock it off.

And of course, there's a roadtrip coming up in September, but I've already got cash earmarked away for that.

So I think I'm done with the worst of the furniture spending... which is great because I've put down over $15,000 worth of "stuff" this year to accommodate the new home. Granted, I'm not quite done yet, but it's at the point where I can dramatically slow the pace of buying any more furniture until assets are replenished.

The worst hit was the $2600 media center I installed inside the hole in the wall. But at least that goes toward the home improvement category and adds value to the house.

Speaking of which, Zillow with their "algorithm modification" has seriously janked my home value around. Earlier this month it sunk as low as $396K, but just a week later bounced back up to $447K! I'm pretty sure neither of those are correct, so I'm just going to leave my home value largely unchanged until Zillow settles down and gets it right. I'm trying to factor in the plantation shutters and media center (an extra $4K) so it doesn't look as bad.

I'm going to try a "mini spending fast" for July and see if I can't turn the decreasing cash flow around. I've got a lot of extra music jobs coming up for the next 6-8 weeks so that will help.

Still edging downward in the overall net worth, but that is courtesy of home prices which continue to fall. It's not a rapid descent, but a slow bleed, which is usually what happens in this kind of market. I've tacked on the wood shutters as "home improvement" so it's not quite as bad as Zillow makes it out to be.

There's only about $3000-4000 more I have to put into the home, and then I'm completely done. Of course, the biggest chunk is the media cabinet I'm having installed. Thankfully I can put that into the home value.

I've been playing piano more at church on Sundays... which means I have some extra funds to cover all this craziness. I haven't needed to go into full lockdown mode on funds yet, and let's hope I never have to.

Apparently kicking myself in the shins every time I whip out my credit card hasn't helped much. I had to finish paying up on the plantation shutters and bought a new receiver to top off the home theater in the great room. That should be it on the big expenses for now, although I do have the media center to think about (ugh). I'm still spending smaller amounts on little things here and there in order to finish filling the nooks and crannies of the house, not to mention the usual food staples a few times a month.

If I keep my sanity in check I should be down to under $500 in credit card debt by July. That's my goal anyway.

Still waiting on those tax refund checks... and I've got church gigs every Sunday for May, so that will reduce the bleeding somewhat.

If my net worth drops under $200,000 then I will go into "thrift mode" and not spend on anything except food, no matter how badly I may "need" something. That's the plan anyway. We'll see how May plays out.

All right folks, no need to panic here. Just a temporary little side effect of what happens when you become a homeowner.

I paid off a bit of the credit card debt, although I seem to keep finding more things I need for the house, so spending hasn't fully subsided yet. I had to put out extra for that washer/dryer and I needed a new projection screen for the great room. Unfortunately I need a new audio receiver and a few other things before the new home theater is complete. The plantation shutters should be in this month (which is more expense) and I need to get the media niche center started, and I don't even want to tell you how much that will cost.

House prices in this area are just now starting to take some hits. Zillow claims I've lost almost 2% of my home value in the past 30 days. I knew it was coming so can't say I wasn't prepared. Still, it isn't fun to watch your assets shrink, liquid or otherwise.

The silver lining here is that I will be receiving a decent tax refund from Uncle Sam, my first in years! That goes directly back into the savings account. I also got 80% of my insurance deductible back from that accident in August (arbitration takes forever!) so that will go back into the business fund.

I'm at the point where I cringe every time I have to use my credit card, even if it's a $25 purchase. It all adds up very quickly, and I can see how some people get into debt so easily. I'm nowhere near that point, and I hope never to be either.

I don't expect my net worth to start heading up again until the summer. By then most of my big expenses should be done and I can resume a normal budget.

I tried to be good for February, but there will still too many empty holes in the new house. Most of the furniture is in, plus rugs/plants as accessories. The biggest pain to my wallet was the addition of a brand new washer/dryer from Sears. While I took advantage of their 30% off special, the extended warranty, delivery and setup fees pushed the total right back up. Ugh.

I still have several major expenses ahead, but I'm spacing those out over the next few months as best I can. I don't need everything at once.

I'm looking to music side jobs wherever possible, which is slowing my rate of descent on funds. Credit card debts should go down considerably for March (at the expense of my remaining cash horde). My utilities are very reasonable at the moment since I'm not completely moved into the house yet, but I'll probably start living there in the coming weeks.

Oh, the lovely joys of starting from scratch when you begin moving into a new home.

It pained me to see the credit cards take such a beating the past 30 days. Despite the hordes of gift cards and coupons I have used, the necessities of filling 1555 square feet of living space is much bigger than I had anticipated (and I'm not even done yet).

The most painful part was the furniture (some of which I added to the "Personal Property" assets). A few of you may notice the extra liability in the "Other Debts" section. That's a line of credit I acquired at Living Spaces, where I can make payments and not be charged interest if I pay it all off by Jan 2013. (Don't worry, it'll be paid off before Dec 2012 arrives, just to be on the safe side.) So that amount will slowly diminish over time.

The Citibank MasterCard reached a new high of $3,700, but that will be paid off by next month. I won't do payments on that, because I'm not a fan of 19.99% APR. I have enough cash to cover it.

The car has also been having a little trouble, with the A/C and fuel gauge no longer working, so I have to spend a few bills on that. Ugh... best timing ever.

Once things settle down I'll concentrate on getting a few extra side jobs to help offset my big spending. Can't let that net worth dip too much. ;)

Profile

I'm the Lead Web Developer at an advertising agency. Financially, I was raised in a conservative family and was shown the important value of saving.

Why I joined NetworthIQ:

I wanted to make sure that I wasn't behind while growing my investments, and also comparing to where I stand among my peers.

Best Financial Decision:

Staying home to live with the folks as long as possible in order to maximize gains

Worst Financial Decision:

Not buying a house before the markets went sky-high. (Not that it makes a difference, I had very little net worth at the time.)

Current Financial Strategy:

As a homeowner, the current strategy is to set a strict budget for monthly expenses and make sure my net worth keeps growing, even if the growth is a fraction of what it used to be.
I have a 6-month "emergency stash" put away in a Money Market fund that I will not touch, unless I'm in the most dire of need. (Let's hope that's not anytime soon.)
Some day when I'm brave enough, I'll do a little investing in stocks and bonds.

How I manage my money:

Salary income flows into the checking account, which pays monthly expenses. Any money made from side jobs goes into the business account. Once every quarter, I will allocate excess funds (if any) to the savings account, reserved for "fun" things that are not part of the normal budget (such as expensive electronics or vacations).
I make sure to allocate around $150-200 a month for going out with friends. If I run out of money, I can "borrow" from the next month if necessary, but then I force myself to cut down on spending (aka spending "fast") until I'm caught up.

Tools I use:

For now, just Quicken Deluxe for Mac. I've been using it since 1994 and it's got every single financial transaction I've ever done. I'm using the dated 2007 version, and the 2010 Financial Life version doesn't have enough features to support what I want. I hope the 2011/2012 version gets it right.

I need help with:

investing in the market? Seems like a scary proposition to me.

Favorite Financial Personalities:

Ummm.... don't have any yet. I read a lot of website financial blogs/articles so I can keep a basic understanding of how this whole money thing works.

Favorite Books:

Hmm... I guess Star Wars novels, although I haven't read one for a while